In the textile industry, as in all sectors of the manufacturing industry, most of the innovative efforts are directed to reducing the personnel necessary in the various productive cycles. For this purpose, several types of equipment have been developed to automatically feed textile machines.
For obvious economical reasons it is necessary to use a single feeder for several machines. Since these machines must, however, operate with different types of products, such a single feeder must, therefore, simultaneously handle bobbins and reels with different type yarns, which makes it necessary for these bobbins and reels to be identified so that it will be possible to select the yarn suitable for each single machine.
On the other hand, because of the need to use bobbins or reels with different structures, due to their different manufacture and/or subsequent modifications, the problem of identifying and selecting them occurs not only before sending them to the relevant machine, namely when they are still "full," but also when they are "empty," i.e., after they have been removed from said machines and before they are loaded again with the appropriate yarn or roving.
Accordingly, there still remains a need for a method and a device which allows for the easy selection and identification of bobbins and reels, which are to be fed to textile machines, thereby avoiding the necessity to re-identify and select them before rovings or yarns are again wound thereon.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to solve these problems by providing a method and device for marking and identifying bobbins, reels or similar textile supports, in order to carry out their selection immediately before they are fed to their relevant textile machines.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an easy, reproducible and reliable marking method and marking device of a mechanical type.